Sunday, March 24, 2013

Q: Take the four words "salt," "afar," "lava" and "trap." Write them one under the other, and the words will read the same vertically as horizontally. This is a word square of four-letter words. Note that the only vowel in this example square is an A. The object of the challenge is to create a five-letter word square using only common, uncapitalized English words, in which the only vowel in the entire square is A. The word in the center row, and column, is NASAL.

Aside from subjecting you to some obvious clues, there isn't much I can add, so I'll just give you a picture of the grid & let you figure it out from there.

122 comments:

Here's my standard reminder... don't post the answer or any hints that could lead directly to the answer (e.g. via Google or Bing) before the deadline of Thursday at 3pm ET. If you know the answer, click the link and submit it to NPR, but don't give it away here.

You may provide indirect hints to the answer to show you know it, but make sure they don't give the answer away. You can openly discuss your hints and the answer after the Thursday deadline. Thank you.

I would have had a bear of a time solving it without your grid, Blaine. Thanks, you can dismantle it now. Don't mean to sound histrionic or prideful here, but while Obama was traveling around the world and back giving speeches, I solved this in my head in 9 minutes while listening to the news. (clues to all four words are here).

I was chewing on this one like a piece of bamboo for quite some time. But the whole thing broke into pieces for me once I read your "Histrionic" sentence. Before that I could have had a map shoved in my face and I would still be clueless.

I concur, Hugh---if you are including the consonants in NASAL. Allow me to add that although these are fairly common words, this may be a tough puzzle for NASCAR fans to solve. Please note that I am in no way intending to denigrate NASCAR fans. (By the way, if you happen to be a NASCAR fan, "denigrate" means "to put down.")

I'd like to use "snooty" as a clue now, but that one was already provided. OK, I guess that's not worth getting upset about. Still, folks everywhere should agree that, educational as this puzzle may be, it's a toss-up.

A bit melodramatic, dont'cha think, Curtis? And while we're on the subject, Good Friday is upon us once again. May I interject, that if Jezus died for my paltry sins, I think he overreacted a bit. Just sayin'...

Sorry, guys, I was incommunicado for a few days, visiting Baltimore & DC for my wife's birthday. Missed the famous denizens of the National Zoo but enjoyed the madcap art at the American Visionary Art Museum in Charm City. Had a great ride through the district on a Capital Bikeshare bike on Saturday, but a much less pleasant one on a hotel loaner on Sunday -- the seat adjustment wouldn't lock, I found myself forced first onto a bridge into Arlington, and then on a busy parkway I had no business being on, but made it back to the hotel at last. Thought this was going to be a tough puzzle, but realized that the starting constraints greatly limited the candidate word lists,

Huzzah! Act I, Scene 3 of Hamlet is one long string of aphorisms including "To thine own self be true." Some directors play Polonius as an old fool, some as a wise but rambling man. All I know is I'd never name my kid Laertes (or Ophelia for that matter).

Only 150 correct answers last week. Given that, a big chunk of them must have come from right here.

In no particular order:Of or relating to the nose :)RolleramaThe Beatles white album, NotBig fellowPimp

There is no clue in this paragraph but I have frequently chuckled (no pun intended) to myself that sometimes the puzzle is easier to solve than figuring out some of the clues on this blog. I’m guilty of contributing obfuscatory clues myself so I’m not picking on anyone. Just an observation.

I was quite interested to hear that today's on-air contestant had played on-air before. Maybe the others of us who have played on-air before should start sending in answers again. (I played on-air once, then was rejected twice after my name was pulled out of the hat years later.)

This suggests three possibilities to me:

(1) The producer who set up the segment forgot to ask the contestant if he had played before

(B) The rules have been changed so that now there is no prohibition on playing more than once

(III) The rule has been there all along and stands unchanged: You can play on-air again if 19 years elapse between games.

I was on the air back in ’05. Then I was picked again approximately a year later. I told the producer that but said if he’d rather put someone else on that would be OK with me. He thanked me and that’s what he did. But he never said I couldn’t play if I had chosen to do so.

This reminded me of the puzzle on 11-13-2010, the contestant was from Wisconsin, and it was the first time he had ever entered. Then I heard the same man on 'Wait, Wait, don't tell me.' He had a busy Thursday.

My attempt at interpreting Chuck's 'miscellaneous thoughts':'of the nose'->NASAL->3(I think that's a given) (:pimp->pander->PANDA->1 (I hope never to be proud of having a ready synonym for 'pimp')big fellow->titan->ATLAS->5 (I guess)rollerama->DRAMA->4 (just because of the 'rama')Beatles->APART->2 (by default, I'm afraid)

Lorenzo:Congrats on your honorary mention today. I am wondering if you understood my comment to you last week about visiting Victoria B.C. So, in case, you might want to Google, Mr. Floatie of Victoria Canada.

Don't tell me Paul remarried again....just kidding. I saw snipppets of the Web cast (as much as you can see with a two year old yelling I want a movie in your ear) . She is personable, committed to social justice and diversion and seems committed to Smith's mission. I was also an early childhood major. Hope to see her when she commes to DC

Things are so different now. Presidents used to stay until they could no longer function. Of the 11 presidents (counting the newly selected), I have experienced 5 since I enrolled. I was supposed to go to a reunion last year but made a hard decision to go to a Dartmouth reunion instead. It was also less expensive for me and more close friends committed to attending. What about you?.

I go back fairly often since my mom lives 45 minutes from Northampton. My geology profs & I are good friends so I usually get together with them when I'm back. The campus was resplendent when I was back in '11 for my son's May graduation from Brown, daughter's campus tours, & visit with friends & co-workers in the Alumnae Association. Jill Ker Conway was my favorite president.

Attended Dartmouth junior year as an exchange student. Was a Dartmouth Player since I was a theater major until I had to return to Smith senior year as an education major since my Mom was not paying for a theater degree.

I enjoyed the comment above about "vowel movement". When I told my family, they totally lost it - utter pandemonium. Btw, I think Will's 4x4 example can be reversed engineered to help solve the puzzle.

Except with the crossing single lines box character ("┼") replaced with letters showing the solution. I first tried little square characters ("□"), but although they show up perfectly both in EditPad Lite and in this comment editor in which I'm entering this post right now, they cause the lines in which they appear to be badly misaligned in NotePad.

To view the template in EditPad Lite, just copy it here, go to EditPad Lite, <cntrl>N to start a new document, then select "Convert", "Text Encoding", and then select "Unicode UTF-8". Do this before you paste!

You may wish to use this template to experiment and come up with your solution:

Again, while that template doesn't look so good posted here, it'll look great in your text editor!

....And the preview tells me that the bullet character, for which I had high hopes, which make the first of the templates in this post look about as bad as if I had just used periods ("."). So in the future, I guess I'll stick with the crossing single lines box character ("┼") to act as the filler character for the empty cells.

This puzzle, simple as it proved to be, was the ONLY activity that prevented my going into a coma or slitting my own throat with a debit card at a recent Easter ecumenical "Taize" (accent acute over the "e") I was asked to by a friend.Hate being so sacrilegious but there you go--the answer is as plain as black and white.

Of or relating to the nose :) – NASALRollerama – shares 80% of the letters in DRAMAThe Beatles Abbey Road album, Not – not Come Together, come APARTBig fellow – ATLAS has to hold heaven and earth on his shouldersPimp – pander, more or less PANDA for persons with pronunciation impairment